The online home of the self-published comics & prose anthology, Warrior27, an homage to Britain's early-80s comic magazine, Warrior - along with the various writings, musings, and miscellany of Dan Fleming and Chris Beckett.

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Thursday, June 5, 2014

The thematic core of Star Trek Into Darkness is the
friendship of Kirk and Spock. Star Trek
is an ensemble, but Kirk and Spock have been the focal point since very early
in the original series – the wild, irreverent emotional spectrum of Kirk vying
against the logic and calm demeanor of Spock and the way they grow to
understand one another to become the closest of friends. It’s a wonderful dynamic that evokes many
heartfelt, and human, moments within the crazy – and sometimes not so crazy –
ideas of its science fiction milieu.

So, it seems to make sense to focus on this important
relationship with the second “new” Star Trek film … if one does not consider
the fact that these are different characters.

The primary emotional beat of the original Wrath of Khan (the original second Trek film to which this second new film
calls back, often with too heavy a hand) is an intensely touching moment
between Kirk and Spock, after Spock has sacrificed his life to save the
Enterprise. It works, incredibly
well. Why? Because the weight of this friendship has
been built up over the course of dozens of episodes from the original
series. Fans got to watch the
relationship

between Kirk and Spock evolve and grow and became invested in it
through all those hours of television.
There is a history for these two characters, as imagined by William
Shatner (that’s for you, Brad) and Leonard Nimoy, which allows for just such a
cathartic scene. We, the viewers, have
grown to love these characters just as they have grown to love one another, and
to see that all rent asunder by Khan – who, it should be noted, also has a
history with these characters from the original series – hits us in the
gut. It’s tragic.

J.J. Abrams and co. thought it would be good to rehash this
with Into Darkness. They understood there were new fans to the
franchise, but they also knew that many of the diehard fans who’ve been along
for the Trek ride all these decades
would also be in attendance when the movie opened. I think they counted on that. And I think they counted on those fans
imbuing the same emotional intensity with the new Spock and Kirk as they had
with the classic characters, though there is a part of me inclined to believe
they didn’t think anything through at all, other than: KHAN!!!!!! That, ultimately, is where they failed.

***SPOILERS FOR Into Darkness AHEAD***

As I stated above, these are new characters. They have only been on one mission, as far as
the audience is concerned. We have not
grown with these characters, as we did with the classic Kirk and Spock, and so,
there is no emotional release when Kirk sacrifices himself to save the
Enterprise, eliciting a raw emotional rage from Spock that lands flat. Flat.
Flat. Flat.

***SPOILERS AHEAD FOR
THE DC EVENT Forever Evil***

Again, I must compare this new iteration of Trek to the reboot of DC Comics – the
new 52. Like the new 52, this new Trek reshuffled everything, created a
divergent timeline that kept all of the history of the Enterprise and its crew intact
(which, if you believe Dan DiDio, is actually not a possibility within the new
52), and could have moved off in a brand new direction. Each company responsible for these
initiatives proclaimed how different the new status quo would be. (And though I find the new 52 to be an abject
failure, aesthetically speaking, I must commend DC Comics for continuing to try
and publish books in myriad genres other than superheroes).

And yet, they have crafted stories reliant upon the decades
of backstory already built up, which is supposed to have nothing to do with
these new versions of familiar characters.

By way of example: Forever Evil. We are not quite three years into the new 52
initiative – certainly not enough time to build up the relationships necessary
for many emotional beats that might have more weight given a fifty or seventy
year history of a particular character, especially when stories are stretched
across multiple issues rather than the single issue stories (or multiple
stories within a single issue) prevalent in the golden and silver age of comics. But, with the culmination of this series, the
big bad turns out to be the Anti-Monitor.

o_O What??????

This “reveal” has no impact unless one has read Crisis on
Infinite Earths from 1985, and even then, that story is no longer canon
within DC continuity because of the new 52 reboot. Star Trek does this same thing with Into Darkness, declaiming about these
new characters who can surprise us, while relying heavily upon the continuity
set up by the classic characters. Infusing an emotional tether onto new
characters because they have a tenuous connection to well-known classics … that
doesn’t work.

The other piece of this equation pertaining to the
relationship of the new Spock and Kirk can be viewed through the lens of the Star Wars prequels. In those films, particularly the second and
third ones, viewers are told that Anakin and Obi-Wan are good friends and as
close as brothers. Yet, we never
actually see them interact in a way that might suggest this (remember: show, don’t tell). There was that opening film, then we got an
older Ani and Obi-Wan but were given none of the experiences that formed this
supposed friendship. It didn’t
work.

Compare this with the real Star Wars films. (yeah, I
went there) In that first film, Han and
Luke must blast out of Mos Eisley, make their way through the Death Star
without being caught, save Princess Leia from the detention block, make their
way back to the Falcon (after escaping from the trash compactor and evading
Storm Troopers), launch their way off the Death Star, and are then forced to
battle with the Death Star at the rebel base on the fourth moon of Yavin,
wherein Han appears to leave with his reward but returns to shoot out of the glare
of a star and take out Vader’s Tie Fighter, allowing Luke to blast the Death
Star and win the battle of Yavin IV. Star
Wars is two hours of action, and through all of those obstacles the bond
between Luke and Han strengthens, even as we move to Hoth in Empire. It was a neat trick that George Lucas and his
fellow creators pulled off, making us believe in the strong friendship of Han,
Luke, and Leia, with merely two hours to do it.

Abrams and co. failed in that respect, and the entirety of Into Darkness fell apart for me.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

I really wanted to love Star
Trek Into Darkness. And there were
many things I enjoyed in this film, as noted in the first part of this short
series. But, overall, it completely fell
flat for me.

1.First: where the hell were Bones, Uhura, Scotty, and
Chekov? Yeah, they were in the film, but
their roles were so diminished that it felt as if they were totally absent and,
for the most part, superfluous with regard to the overall narrative.

Into Darkness and the 2009 reboot, Star
Trek, had similar run times, but that first one felt like all the
characters had their parts to play – integral parts to play – and we also got
to know them as characters, with many older fans filling in what we knew of the
original crew to accentuate them just a bit.
Certainly, that was essential to that first film, but it’s important to
note that it was something the filmmakers achieved, admirably so. But with this second one, they focused on the
friendship of Spock and Kirk, which is the thematic core of Into Darkness, while leaving the rest of
the crew to flounder about while the writers attempted to shoehorn them in
somewhere. As a result, the rest of the
crew felt tacked on, unnecessary, and though Kirk and Spock are the centerpoint
of the franchise, focusing in on them, at the expense of the other characters,
missed the point of what makes this fictional universe special.

2.Khan’s
introduction:
For anyone who didn’t see the ads for Into
Darkness, thankfully we got an overblown, ominous musical cue when Benedict
Cumberbatch’s character was introduced.
Nothing like hitting the audience over the head with an orchestral
hammer. This was irritating. And it seemed a missed opportunity. We learned that Cumberbatch was given an
identity that incorporated him into Starfleet, and wouldn’t it have been great
to believe him to be one of the “good guys” and then have him turn? Maybe.
Maybe not. And probably not a
fair argument, but the heavy-handedness of his introduction was the first, big
indication that I was in for a ride I probably would not enjoy.

3.Kirk
is demoted for, what, two minutes:
This quote-unquote plot point … this
one really irked me. If you’re going to shake
things up, so to speak, in a fairly significant manner, then just go for
it. Don’t pussyfoot around and ostensibly
change it, only to have it revert back to the status quo minutes later. You’re cheating your audience, and you offer
them nothing within the overall narrative when you do this. Revealing character comes through how they
handle adversity, through action and consequence. With this quick scene from Into Darkness, there was no real
consequence for Kirk, not if it wasn’t a lasting consequence. One might argue this demotion is the reason
Kirk took responsibility later in the film (which yields no result, since
Admiral Marcus doesn’t care to offer mercy to Kirk’s crew), but it did not ring
true because of the limited time span of the demotion. It wasn’t earned, and even if many in the
audience were unable to articulate that point, there were many who realized, in
an intuitive sense, that something was wrong.

4.Khan was hyper-intelligent …
and he put his crewmembers into photon torpedoes to hide them, and eventually
save them. Chew on that one for a bit.

5.Carol Marcus:
Did she have a purpose in this film?
Other than showing off her futuristic underwear?

So, what point did that scene (the underwear scene) serve? None.
We already knew Kirk was a cad, a womanizer. Ummmmmm.
Nope. I got no other reason for
it. Moving on.

Marcus was able to get onto a major starship merely by lying to the captain
that she had orders to be there? (It’s
possible I missed something here; so correct me, if that’s the case). This was a major naval vessel (or at least a
major starship within a large corporate-type entity). There have to be protocols for accepting new crewmembers. And, yes, Kirk isn’t one to stand on protocol,
but it completely undermined his character.
If he was deemed responsible enough, even with his inability to follow
regulations to the letter, for the captaincy of the Enterprise, Kirk must have
shown some semblance of this responsibility before.

This just irritated me. It circumvented
any kind of rules already set up in this fictional universe. Like Highlander III, where Wesley
Snipes’s character fought on holy ground, just because he was super-evil, you
can’t break the rules of your fictional reality without breaking the
narrative. It’s like a first grader’s
superhero story, where whatever needs to happen just happens, because it has to
happen. Rules are set up to keep writers
honest, but also to infuse their narratives with obstacles that require thought
and ingenuity, rather than the laziness evinced in this scene, and many
others.

6.The Two Spocks:
Continuing on from setting up rules, only to break them. When new-Spock contacted classic-Spock, he
(new-Spock) asked about Khan.
Classic-Spock began his response with the disclaimer, which I’ve paraphrased: “I said I would never share information from
our timeline…” This is supposed to make
it suspenseful, I guess. But then,
immediately, he followed the disclaimer with a big BUT, and then went on to
share information about Khan. Just. That.
Easy.

This wasn’t suspense, or drama. This was,
again, just ignoring the rules because it was too difficult to figure out how
to inventively get around this obstacle.
Poor writing.

7.Don’t allow accidents to get your characters out
of a jam:
This happened at least twice, that I remember.
First, we had Bones and Carol Marcus go down to a planetoid to disarm
one of the torpedoes. When Bones
inadvertently armed it, Marcus had thirty seconds to stop it from detonating. She opened an access port, began acting as if
she knew what she was doing, and, ultimately, just ripped the thing – whatever
it was – out of the access port … amazingly shutting it down just in time. There was no ingenuity, no expertise
exhibited by Marcus, just stupid, dumb luck.
*sigh*

And then we had Scotty on Admiral Marcus’s ship. Lucky for us.
(wipes brow) Now, I’m sure there
are some who would argue this is a result of actions and decisions made by
characters beforehand. But the path for
Scotty to get here was so intricate and relied on so many little “chance”
occurrences, along with the fact that so much else, up to this point, happened
that I found wrong-headed, that it felt too neatly tied up. Sure, this is something we expect from our
fiction, but it also needs to feel natural.
This did not.

Call this sour grapes, or whatever
platitude you want to insert here, but my reason for getting this down is to
examine why Into Darkness didn’t work
for me, from a writer’s point of view.
What lessons can I take from the movie? And are these the correct lesson? [Feel free to interject and offer
counterpoints to my own above. I’m not
closed against being persuaded I’m wrong]

That said, I have one more piece in
this short series to share, which will tackle the biggest problem I found in
this film. That will be next.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

STAR TREK - the 2009 movie
that rebooted the Star Trek universe, from J.J. Abrams & co. – was one of
my favorite movies of the past few years.
I saw it in the theater and had chills as soon as I heard that first ping, before anything other than a star
field was onscreen. Loved it. The story took parallel timelines and made it
work. The audience was given slightly
altered, but still recognizable, characters.
And the goodwill that came from this reinvention afforded these creators
the opportunity to go off in whatever direction they wanted.

But, as with the “New 52” relaunch from
DC comics, it appears Abrams, et al. merely want to rehash what has come
before, rather than attempt something bold or inventive, as evidenced by Star
Trek Into Darkness.

I wanted to love this movie. I think Benedict Cumberbatch is a great
actor. I love science fiction (and am a
fan of the original Trek) and have
been left wanting more with much of the recent sci-fi filmic fare (see: Prometheus). Even with the backlash online, I was ready to
be a contrarian (by way of example: despite
its flaws, and there are many, I love Return of the Jedi).

But no … didn’t happen.

[tangent: Sure, this piece will look like
click-bait. Fair enough. But, for me, someone who writes and is always
trying to learn and improve and make my own stories better, this is an exercise
in trying to parse out what it is about this movie that did not work for
me. And, by putting it out here on the
internet, it is possible someone with a different point of view will read it
and offer some counterpoints that might allow me to re-evaluate Into Darkness. Maybe that’s an overreach on my part, but it
would nice if that happened.]

First: what did I enjoy about this movie?

A lot, actually. The scenery and effects were wonderful. The starships felt very much a part of this
futuristic world. They had weight and
dimensionality and belonged in this milieu.
In short, they felt real. And the
settings also, with the possible exception of the area on Kronos where Khan is
hiding, felt fleshed out in a way that allowed you to immerse yourself in this
world and this story. Similarly, the
costuming of the crowd scenes on Earth was very well done. The fashions were different enough to feel
futuristic, while also being recognizable enough that, again, you weren’t taken
out of the film because of the oddity of the clothing. It’s a fine line that is navigated smartly by
the costuming crew.

Many of the scenes – the opening
one with Spock in danger, the scene on the shuttle as Spock and Uhura argue
(which almost fell into slapstick, but, to my mind, clung to that precipice
without tumbling down), and others – were well conceived. Despite what I knew was coming, I loved the
scene as Kirk and Scottie ran through a listing Enterprise to get to the warp
core. Running along the walls, jumping
across side corridors, working to stay upright – I thought that was well shot
and an exciting and novel scene. I also
appreciated it when Kirk made the decision, as they are setting off for Kronos,
to apprehend Khan rather than kill him, as Admiral Marcus had ordered. It was a nice character moment that did not
waste the argument between Kirk and Spock from moments before.

There were some great scenes –
scenes that looked wonderful and worked well narratively – in this movie. But with too many that fell flat, within the
parameters of the “rules” of this particular narrative, the whole of the film failed
to cohere in a way that worked, to my mind.